Tag Archives: Shenzhen University

A bioinspired hydrogel patch with controllable adhesion properties for enhanced soft tissue repair

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The paper’s graphical abstract presents some intriguing visuals,

Caption: Schematic representation of the A/B-sides multi-biological functional hydrogel patch. Credit: Wenle Chen from Shenzhen Second People’s Hospital, First Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University and Yu Wang from Wenzhou Institute, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Let’s find out what those visuals were intended to convey, from an August 6, 2025 Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory (SLAB) press release on EurekAlert.org announced a bioinspired hydrogel patch,

A research team from Shenzhen University, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Hong Kong Polytechnic University has developed an innovative, bioinspired hydrogel patch with controllable adhesion properties to enhance soft tissue repair and prevent adhesions. Inspired by octopus suction cups and the eyeball surfaces, this patch features a dual-sided design: one side offers adjustable, revocable adhesion, while the other provides anti-adhesive functions. In vivo [animal] experiments demonstrate its effectiveness in reducing inflammation, promoting tissue healing, and allowing repositioning during surgical procedures, marking a significant advancement in biomedical materials.

Tissue repair required in scenarios such as trauma, post-operative of tumors is a common challenge for human healthcare. Soft tissue injuries and surgical wounds often face challenges such as excessive tissue adhesion, which can complicate healing and cause secondary complications. Traditional patches and sutures either lack adequate adhesion or induce unwanted tissue sticking, leading to inflammation and hindered recovery. There is an urgent need for biomaterials that can intelligently balance strong tissue integration with the ability to detach or reposition easily, matching the dynamic environment of internal tissues.

In this context, hydrogel patches, owing to their exceptional biocompatibility and potential adhesive properties, are expected to become ideal materials for soft tissue repair. These materials can gradually degrade, naturally integrate with human tissues, and easily incorporate drugs or growth factors to promote angiogenesis, thereby enhancing the speed and quality of tissue healing. In general, the common hydrogel patches can be divided into adhesive ones and anti-adhesive ones. Adhesive patches can form rapid and strong covalent bonds with moist tissue to promote tissue regeneration, whose further applications are limited by excessive tissue adhesion. While anti-adhesive patches can address the tissue adhesion problem by hydrophobic surface modification or coarse structure design, they are difficult to fit the wounds tightly for treatment. Hence, it is necessitating to design an anisotropic patch combining the merits of promoting tissue regeneration and anti-adhesive function.

The Solution: Drawing inspiration from nature, interdisciplinary research team engineered a novel hydrogel patch that mimics natural mechanisms using suction cup-like structures for physical, reversible adhesion and covalent bonds for permanent fixation. The patch’s adhesive side uses microstructures that generate negative pressure for temporary adhesion, allowing surgeons to adjust its position during surgery, once aligned, chemical reactions secure a firm, covalent attachment. The other side is made of highly hydrated, anti-adhesive materials to prevent surrounding tissue from sticking undesirably. Additionally, the patch absorbs positively charged inflammatory factors and provides sustained drug release, further aiding in inflammation reduction and tissue regeneration.

The bioinspired system features a multi-functional, dual-sided hydrogel patch composed of polyacrylic acid-NHS for the adhesive surface, and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) combined with polyethylene glycol diacrylate (PEGDA) for the anti-adhesive barrier. Its porous network not only enables physical and chemical adhesion but also captures inflammatory cytokines, fostering a more favourable healing environment. In vivo tests in animal models confirmed the patch’s strong, controllable adhesion, its ability to prevent unwanted tissue adhesion, and its capacity to promote faster, healthier tissue repair.

The Future: This innovative hydrogel patch represents a significant step forward in the field of soft tissue repair. It combines the benefits of promoting tissue regeneration and preventing adhesion into one device. Future research will focus on optimizing the patch’s properties for specific clinical applications, such as abdominal wall defect repair and other dynamic wound management scenarios. The development of advanced manufacturing technologies like 3D bioprinting could also enable the customization of patch geometry for specific anatomical structures. Additionally, the exploration of environmentally adaptive intelligent components could lead to a more precise control of adhesion and drug release that aligns with the tissue regeneration process.

The Impact: This hydrogel patch offers a new paradigm for soft tissue repair with its “revocable” adhesion properties. It has the potential to significantly reduce clinical adhesion scores, effectively reduce inflammation, promote wound healing, and enhance collagen deposition. The successful integration of controllable adhesion and anti-adhesion functions in one patch could revolutionize the way we approach soft tissue repair and adhesion prevention in clinical settings.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Bioinspired hydrogel patch with controllable adhesion for soft tissue repair by Wenle Chen, Wenzhao Li, Puxiang Lai, Jian Cai, Lingyu Sun, Yu Wang. Materials Futures, Volume 4, Number 3 Published Date: July 20, 2025 DOI: 10.1088/2752-5724/adec0a © 2025 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd on behalf of the Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory

This paper is open access.

Biosynthetic melanin nanoparticles enabled by genetically engineered bacterium

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A January 13, 2023 news item on phys.org announces research into genetically engineering bacteria so they produce melanin nanoparticles, i.e., biosynthetic melanin nanoparticles, Note: Links have been removed,

Photothermal therapy (PTT) has attracted considerable attention for the treatment of tumors because it is minimally invasive and has spatiotemporal selectivity.

Melanin is a kind of multifunctional pigment found widely in mammals, plants and microbes, with great prospects as a PTT agent for cancer treatment. Unfortunately, commercially available melanin is mainly obtained by chemical synthesis or extraction from sepia, which hinders its large-scale production and causes some potential safety hazards.

Recently, a research team led by Prof. Yan Fei from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with Prof. Lin Jing from Shenzhen University and Prof. Xu Xiaohong from Guangdong Medical University, heterologously expressed a tyrosinase gene in Escherichia coli to synthesize melanin nanoparticles under mild and environmentally friendly conditions.

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Caption: Schematic illustration of biosynthetic melanin nanoparticles for photoacoustic imaging-guided photothermal therapy. Credit: SIAT [Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology]

A January 13, 2023 Chinese Academy of Sciences press release (also on EurekAlert but published January 12, 2023), which originated the news item, provides a little more detail about the research,

The biosynthetic melanin nanoparticles exhibited excellent biocompatibility, good stability, and negligible toxicity. “They had strong absorption in the near-infrared region and higher photothermal conversion efficiency (48.9%) than chemically synthesized melanin-like polydopamine nanoparticles under an 808-nm laser irradiation,” said Prof. YAN.

The researchers further evaluated the photoacoustic imaging performance and antitumor efficacy of biosynthetic melanin nanoparticles. The results showed that the biosynthetic melanin nanoparticles had excellent photoacoustic imaging performance and could be used for photoacoustic imaging-guided photothermal therapy in vivo. 

“Our study provided an alternative approach to synthesize PTT agents with broad application potential in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer,” said Prof. YAN.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Biosynthesis of Melanin Nanoparticles for Photoacoustic Imaging Guided Photothermal Therapy by Meijun Fu, Yuping Yang, Zhaomeng Zhang, Yaling He, Yuanyuan Wang, Chenxing Liu, Xiaohong Xu, Jing Lin, Fei Yan. Small DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.202205343 First published: 29 December 2022

This paper is behind a paywall.

Gas nanomedicine

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This study comes from China and it offers an overview of the state-of-the-art of gas nanomedicine and a roadmap for future research. A May 6, 2020 news item on Nanowerk announces the study,

Cancer is deadly, but available cancer treatment methods are quite limited. The use of therapeutic gas molecules such as H2 [hydrogen gas], NO [nitrogen oxide], CO [carbon monoxide] and H2S [hydrogn sulfide] for cancer treatment is promising owing to their unique properties for selectively killing cancer cells and protecting normal cells from damage from other traditional therapies.

However, these gases and most of their prodrugs lack the abilities of active intratumoral accumulation and controlled gas release, causing limited therapeutic efficacy and potential side effects. The development of precision and intelligent gas delivery nanomedicines can maximize the profits of gas therapy by enhancing the bio-availability and bio-safety of therapeutic gases.

More and more gas-releasing nanomedicines are being developed by virtue of multifunctional nanoplatforms, making it ever-increasingly expectable to make breakthrough in cancer treatment. Even so, there are still many gaps between gas therapy and nanomedicines, needing to be filled.

In a new overview published in the Beijing-based National Science Review, scientists at Shenzhen University, China propose a series of engineering strategies of advanced gas-releasing nanomedicines for augmented cancer therapy from four aspects, 1) stimuli-responsive strategies for controlled gas release, 2) catalytic strategies for controlled gas release, 3) tumor-targeted gas delivery strategies, 4) multi-model combination strategies based on gas therapy.

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A May 6, 2020 China Science Press news release on EurekAlert, which originated the news item, provides a little more detail about the overview and about a future application as an assistive therapy in diseases such as coronovirus pneumonia,

“This review systematically dissects the roles of carrier and gas prodrug within nanomedicine for stimuli-responsive gas release, catalytic gas generation routes, tumor-targeted gas delivery approaches and gas therapy-based combination methods, and also provides an insight into their engineering principles and working mechanisms, and correspondingly proposed a series of superior engineering strategies of nanomedicines for gas therapy of cancer to guide the future research.” Dr. Yingshuai Wang said “We believe this review could provide inspiration for constructing advanced gas-releasing nanomedicines.”

Moreover, they have also pointed out current issues and gaps in knowledge, and have envisaged current trends and future prospects of advanced nanomedicines for gas therapy of cancer in this review.

“There are many gaps intriguing me, such as high tissue penetration stimuli-responsive gas release, the local, endless and prodrug-free generation of gases by catalysis, and the super ability of assisting other almost all therapies.” Prof. Qianjun He adds “It is noticeable, in the recent fight of novel coronavirus pneumonia, hydrogen therapy is playing an vitally important role in assisting large numbers of patients to improve oxygen inhalation, relieve hypoxia, and scavenge inflammation. I hope our hydrogen-producing medicines would make bigger contribution to human being in the near future.”

This illustration accompanies the news release,

Caption: Illustration of strategies for engineering advanced nanomedicines for augmented gas therapy of cancer. Credit: ©Science China Press

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Strategies for engineering advanced nanomedicines for gas therapy of cancer by Yingshuai Wang, Tian Yang, Qianjun He. National Science Review, nwaa034, https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwaa034 Published: 27 February 2020

This appears to be an open access paper in PDF only.

For anyone new to the term, a prodrug is (Note: Links have been removed),

A prodrug is a medication or compound that, after administration, is metabolized (i.e., converted within the body) into a pharmacologically active drug.[1][2] Inactive prodrugs are pharmacologically inactive medications that are metabolized into an active form within the body. Instead of administering a drug directly, a corresponding prodrug might be used instead to improve how a medicine is absorbed, distributed, metabolized, and excreted (ADME).[3][4]

You can find out more in the Prodrug Wikipedia entry.